Feb

Ivy League Dems and Republicans Support Marriage Equality

Update, 2/14 11:45pm: CUCR confirms that, in fact, not all of the Ivy League school groups have agreed to sign on to the statement, despite what both political sides at Columbia were told from UPenn. CUCR President Tyler Trumbach asserts that CUCR and CUDems still stand by their own joint statement and hope that the remaining Ivy groups will follow their lead. Frankly we hope the same of our fellow Ivies and are proud of CUCR and the Dems of standing by their statement.

The Republican and Democrat student groups from each of the Ivies have come together to make the following joint statement in support of marriage equality:

“We, the College Democrats and College Republicans chapters of the Ivy League, endorse marriage equality and challenge our nation’s leaders to join us in defense of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples.”

While short in words, it has a strong and important message. From Columbia, CUCR and CUDems say:

“The Columbia Democrats and Columbia University College Republicans are pleased to endorse marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. We join with all of the College Democrats and College Republicans chapters of the Ivy League in urge our nation’s leaders to move forward on an issue too important to be held hostage by party politics. Our generation overwhelmingly supports marriage equality, and we look forward to a future of bipartisan cooperation in ensuring equality for all Americans.”

Tom Callander, CUCR Director of Finance, says this effort comes in the midst of the group discussing the feature of the organization and their beliefs. It was a near unanimous decision on the board to join in–they wanted to best represent the views of the general body that they serve, a majority of whom are in support of marriage equality. CUCR and the Dems met up earlier this week to write their statement.

Janine Balekdjian, CUDems Pres, explains that the initiative was spearheaded by the UPenn Democrats and Republicans, who decided to reach out to the other Ivies after coming together themselves. On the CU Dems decision to join in, Janine says, “of course it’s a no-brainer. I mean we’ve supported marriage equality for way before I’ve even been at Columbia.”

Callander hopes that the force of both sides in the Ivy League will help sway the debates. The way he sees it, there are no downsides to the statement; “worst case scenario, it’ll be ignored.” Balekdjian believes that on campus it won’t have much impact–as she sees it, most Columbians already support gay marriage–but she’s hoping the mass joint statement will make people across the country know that young people are in favor of marriage equality, regardless of political affiliation, “and that this doesn’t have to be a partisan issue–this is about love and human rights.”

To that end, we’d like to make a similar no-brainer statement and say Bwog endorses marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples and we hope to see significant changes made very soon to right the current discriminations.

Update, 12:22 am: CUCR members received the following email half an hour ago:

Dear Members of the Columbia University College Republicans,

I am writing to inform you that the Executive Board of the College Republicans, in a near unanimous vote, has decided to endorse marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples. After a long discussion and much debate, we decided that it was the right thing to do. We think that it is most fitting to make this announcement in time for Valentine’s Day. As Republicans, we cannot idly sit by while millions of honest, hard working individuals are denied the legal rights afforded to heterosexual couples.

CUCR is endorsing marriage equality as part of a larger ivy league initiative. In the coming days, many more Republican and Democratic college organizations will unite to stand up for marriage equality.

In a short while, Bwog and the Spectator will be releasing our statement. However, I wanted to reach out to you first to let you know of this important decision.

Being that the official Republican position is against gay marriage, it seems to me that a club that calls themselves College Republicans actually should not declare a position counter to the main party even if they disagree with it. That being said, if there was one issue that they decided to differ from the party on, I am happy it is this one.

We hope that, by uniting the Ivy League College Republicans and College Democrats behind marriage equality, we can encourage many more chapters across the country to take a stand on what is right, even in places where a campus is not overwhelmingly in support of marriage equality, as it is here.

This is ridiculous. Stop compromising values. This is neomarxist, Frankfurt School, critical theory bs, and has nothing to do with equality. It is not bigotted to believe there should be one institution to bridge the gap between the sexes. While republicans don't support denying basic rights like visitation or power of attorney or any other legal responsibilities possessed by married couples, but a homosexual union is not a marriage. What's wrong with civil unions? If specific communities want to call that union a marriage as a result of their own moral understanding- fine. However, if my community doesn't, why should we be forced to accept this? Stop making everything about civil rights. Stop acting like half the population is gay, 49.99% of people support gay marriage, and the .01% who dont are ignoramouses clinging to their guns and religion. Shame on the CU republicans for falling for this crap, you know better.

Just as all Republicans do not agree with every part of the national party platform, we do not expect all of our members to agree with this decision. However, our board decided to do this in a near-unanimous vote.

We welcome students of all political viewpoints as members and at our meetings.

Hey CUCR, stop making statements for ALL of your members. To defend your member who decided to speak up, how is "However, if my community doesn't, why should we be forced to accept this?" an invalid argument for anything? Refusing to call a union between two members of the same sex a marriage is about as bigoted as refusing to call mailman a fireman. It's a matter of the function of the institution of marriage. By not allowing marriage (which would be impossible as the term defines and functions) to occur between to males or females, no one is being denied any rights. What's wrong with Civil Unions? I'd really like to know. Calling a homosexual union a marriage drastically redefines the institution and renders every heterosexual marriage irrelevant. The CU Republican member is arguing that his community is perfectly justified in making that decision as it would not deny any individual his natural rights. From a legal perspective, Congress does not have the Constitutional authority to legislate on this matter as this power resides in the states as specified by the tenth amendment. However, you liberals conveniently ignore the Bill of Rights unless of course an individual happens to be a criminal.

@Cu Republican: and even I know that Dennis Prager is a bigoted, populist, talk show piece of trash, literally no different from the educated anti-Semites of past American radio. Joseph Teluskhin should be (and I assume is) humiliated by the association.

Also, he's a Columbia alum. Fine. But we all know how many dumb kids go here. And it's not like he studied anything relevant...he was a Soviet studies major.

1. Mr. Prager is Jewish. 2. How is he bigoted? Enlighten the rest of us. Apparently promoting personal responsibility, morality, and natural law is bigoted now. It's amazing how readily the people here follow blindly the ignorance of left-winged media hacks like Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Anderson Cooper, and basically everyone else former officer Doren named in his manifesto. We are on a path toward subjugation. We need not look any further than Soviet China, Nazi Germany, or Red China for a model. Step one, grab the media. Step two, eliminate religion and universal morality. Step three, take away the ability of the people to defend themselves. Step four, censor their free speech. Step five take their property.

We have members from all parts of the Republican party - social conservatives, fiscal conservatives, defense hawks, moderates, and more! The Republican Party is the big tent party, with room for all, and anyone who says otherwise is no member of MY party.

If you would like to come to our meetings and hear our board members speak more on their views on a particular issue, our meetings occurs every Wednesday at 8pm in Hamilton 511.

FYI, people who promote bipartisanship in the pursuit of tyranny are no members of my party. Go back to hanging out with Karl Rove, Reince Priebus, and John Boehner. You and your constituency of "we know best," big government, George Bush, Nixonian Republicans brought the country misery. In fact, you were more instrumental in electing Mr. Barack Hussein Obama than Obama For America. Get out. It's a shame how far the party of Reagan has fallen.

Thank you very much for quickly amending the post --- I am the Chair of the College Republicans at Cornell University. I agreed to personally support the statement, but I did not feel it was appropriate to state a position for the entire organization. I apologize that this information was communicated incorrectly to the CUCR.